6th July 2015, 8:39 PM
(This post was last modified: 6th July 2015, 8:54 PM by A Black Falcon.)
http://thetippingpoint.bangordailynews.c...-of-power/ This article does a good job pointing out the struggles Republicans are having with trying to defend LePage's actions... :)
On the other side of the coin from LePage... Bernie Sanders was in Portland on the 5th (yesterday now, barely).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d9poJU6Kiw
https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/6...1041374208
I was there. Massive crowd! They had one end of the arena blocked off with a screen for some stupid reason, but with all the people standing and on the arena floor, it was probably close to the 9,000 that the arena can hold... quite impressive! Bernie can't win (if nothing else, the word "socialist" alone dooms him), and I'm fine with Hillary too (in '08 I supported her over Obama), but it's great that a definite liberal is running, and getting attention.
The speech was good. It was pretty much what I'd expect a Bernie Sanders speech to be -- that is, mostly focused on economic issues, such as raising the minimum wage (he talked about wages for quite some time), breaking up the banks, student loan forgiveness, free college, and such. At an hour long it felt a bit long, much longer than Obama and Bill Clinton's speeches in Portland last year for Michaud, for example, but that's okay, there was a lot of content there. He's obviously running entirely on domestic issues -- except for a comment on opposing trade deals like the TPP, there was not one word in the whole thing of foreign affairs, though he did mention climate change a bit near the end. I wasn't expecting it, but something would have been nice... I do find foreign policy quite interesting. Oh well.
He spent the beginning part of the speech talking about movements such as the Civil, Women's, and Gay Rights movements as a way of saying that people need to form that kind of movement for economic issues today too; he said that no one president can do everything all on their own, they need help. He's not promising to change everything all on his own, which is good. You'd definitely need a movement to do the kind of things he wants to do.
As far as the issues go, everything he mentioned at the speech sounds good. His mixed record on gun control excepted (not mentioned in the speech) Bernie is amazing on most domestic issues, but I'm not as sure about foreign. I certainly like that he opposed invading Iraq in '03, anyway.
So yeah, it was good, I liked it. My two main issues would be that while Bernie is a good speaker he probably isn't a really inspiring one, and while it is really important I don't find economics all that interesting, which was a bit of an issue for an hour-long speech all about that. The one economics class I took in college was probably the college course I liked least... still though, it was a fun event to go to. The size of the crowd was particularly impressive; going from a reported 3,000 replies to a crowd of eight or nine thousand at the actual event is great! It's impressive how well Bernie is doing at the moment compared to the last 'guy to the left of the leader', Dennis Kucinich. So yeah, it was fun, and Bernie would certainly make a fantastic president if he could actually get elected. If Hillary comes to town I'll go to that too. We just need a Democrat to win in 2016, that's the most important thing...
But yeah, the Democratic party is frustratingly centrist on far too many issues, and sometimes does only look good when you compare them to the complete insanity common on the Republican side. And it is frustrating that the party seems to have mostly moved right over the past few decades. But that still leaves the Democrats as vastly, incomparably superior to the Republicans, who have moved much farther right to the point of looking pretty crazy on far too many issues.
As for Hillary, I'd expect her to be not too different from Obama. Better in some respects, worse than others, fairly similar overall. Obama has his issues (it's awful that he fell for the pro-TPP argument! And he REALLY needed to do more on climate change when he could.), but has been more good than bad. I'm sure Hillary would be similar, and a good president overall.
On the other side of the coin from LePage... Bernie Sanders was in Portland on the 5th (yesterday now, barely).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d9poJU6Kiw
https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/6...1041374208
I was there. Massive crowd! They had one end of the arena blocked off with a screen for some stupid reason, but with all the people standing and on the arena floor, it was probably close to the 9,000 that the arena can hold... quite impressive! Bernie can't win (if nothing else, the word "socialist" alone dooms him), and I'm fine with Hillary too (in '08 I supported her over Obama), but it's great that a definite liberal is running, and getting attention.
The speech was good. It was pretty much what I'd expect a Bernie Sanders speech to be -- that is, mostly focused on economic issues, such as raising the minimum wage (he talked about wages for quite some time), breaking up the banks, student loan forgiveness, free college, and such. At an hour long it felt a bit long, much longer than Obama and Bill Clinton's speeches in Portland last year for Michaud, for example, but that's okay, there was a lot of content there. He's obviously running entirely on domestic issues -- except for a comment on opposing trade deals like the TPP, there was not one word in the whole thing of foreign affairs, though he did mention climate change a bit near the end. I wasn't expecting it, but something would have been nice... I do find foreign policy quite interesting. Oh well.
He spent the beginning part of the speech talking about movements such as the Civil, Women's, and Gay Rights movements as a way of saying that people need to form that kind of movement for economic issues today too; he said that no one president can do everything all on their own, they need help. He's not promising to change everything all on his own, which is good. You'd definitely need a movement to do the kind of things he wants to do.
As far as the issues go, everything he mentioned at the speech sounds good. His mixed record on gun control excepted (not mentioned in the speech) Bernie is amazing on most domestic issues, but I'm not as sure about foreign. I certainly like that he opposed invading Iraq in '03, anyway.
So yeah, it was good, I liked it. My two main issues would be that while Bernie is a good speaker he probably isn't a really inspiring one, and while it is really important I don't find economics all that interesting, which was a bit of an issue for an hour-long speech all about that. The one economics class I took in college was probably the college course I liked least... still though, it was a fun event to go to. The size of the crowd was particularly impressive; going from a reported 3,000 replies to a crowd of eight or nine thousand at the actual event is great! It's impressive how well Bernie is doing at the moment compared to the last 'guy to the left of the leader', Dennis Kucinich. So yeah, it was fun, and Bernie would certainly make a fantastic president if he could actually get elected. If Hillary comes to town I'll go to that too. We just need a Democrat to win in 2016, that's the most important thing...
Dark Jaguar Wrote:ABF, the democrats have proven themselves often too unwilling to actually pursue their own agenda for fear of not being able to pursue their agenda in the future. They've got a reputation among progressives for being limp wristed. Hillary is not the best presidential candidate running right now, but she's the one that's going to win the primary (as ridiculous a system as that is), and every republican candidate is just SO MUCH WORSE that she looks amazing in comparison. Frankly, I don't expect her to actually live up to her campaign promises any more than Obama has, but at least her promises aren't gut wrenchingly terrible like everything the republicans promise.Sure, Hillary probably isn't quite Bernie's match on the issues, but I like that she has moved to the left on some issues, it's a good sign versus where she was on the issues in '08. Probably the fact that this time her main opponent is a liberal (Bernie Sanders), not another centrist (Obama) is a factor...
The democrats are not leftists, they are centrists. Check in with pretty much any leftist party in europe to confirm this. It's just that our "right" is so FAR right that a centrist platform looks progressive in comparison.
But yeah, the Democratic party is frustratingly centrist on far too many issues, and sometimes does only look good when you compare them to the complete insanity common on the Republican side. And it is frustrating that the party seems to have mostly moved right over the past few decades. But that still leaves the Democrats as vastly, incomparably superior to the Republicans, who have moved much farther right to the point of looking pretty crazy on far too many issues.
As for Hillary, I'd expect her to be not too different from Obama. Better in some respects, worse than others, fairly similar overall. Obama has his issues (it's awful that he fell for the pro-TPP argument! And he REALLY needed to do more on climate change when he could.), but has been more good than bad. I'm sure Hillary would be similar, and a good president overall.
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